Here comes the end of 2018 and so is my desire to summarize all of the things that happened at TestingCatalog for the whole year. At first, I just wanted to keep things short, though, because there was a lot of stuff going on, I certainly cannot promise you that.

From the beginning, this project’s main intention was to create a platform that connects beta testers and developers. A year ago we had to choose a new path for TestingCatalog, and then came the idea of going more towards the media sphere, based on the vast majority of our audience is who pushed us, and the low demand from developers’ side.

During 2018 our traffic has grown 10 times to a mere 100K visitors a month. Of course, we had to overcome numerous challenges, but everything has paid off. Because of these fantastic results, we sure are going to set even higher goals for next year.

The picture below, which is our banner image, represents TestingCatalog’s motto, or rather our message for you guys.

Submit your beta testing report to TestingCatalog during the upcoming testing cycle and get a chance to win a 💰prize. The best and most helpful test report will be picked by Lawnchair team @lawnchair.app.

Didn't hear about Lawnchair v2 before? It is an amazing, smooth and customizable Pixel 2 style 📲 launcher. The stable v1 version can be found here, and will be updated as soon as it's out of alpha stage. Until then help improving it with your feedback!

This is the second beta apps collection I would like to share after Google Beta Apps Collection. Microsoft has a huge list of Android apps and mostly all of them are available for beta testing. Besides that, Microsoft has a different beta management strategy and they use Google Plus communities a lot. As an additional plus - they update their changelogs frequently and you can always see what you are actually beta testing. Additionally, you can always identify a beta product by the "Preview" ⚡️ prefix.

Since I introduced a search functionality in the TestingCatalog, I was able to track what people are looking for. This was not a surprise that most of the search requests were about different Google apps, starting from Google Play to YouTube and Gboard. I want to list all available Android Google apps in beta in this post and answer several frequently asked questions.

This game uses a closed beta testing model and it uses closed Google Plus community to manage beta access. It also has a very high position in the TestingCatalog (currently TOP 3). This high position means that it has a lot of likes from our testers and it also has frequent updates with detailed changelogs.

However, it is not that easy to get an access to the beta app. Google+ community is closed, which means that you have to ask for the access first and wait until your request will be accepted by the Google+ community moderator.

Android Developers Console for beta testing purpose

Depending on your goal, you can run an Open beta test or a Closed beta test

Open beta test is the easiest way to go. It will make your app discoverable on the Google Play and everyone who has a link will be able to get a beta version.

Closed beta test. There are always reasons why you may want to run a closed beta test. Your app can be a very popular and you don’t want to receive a lot of spam reviews. You may want to run a targeted research for a limited amount of users. It is possible to submit a list of emails and distribute the app only through pre-selected testers. Another way is to use Google+ community or a Google Group. Community or group can be closed or open and in the meantime, you will need to take some effort on moderation.

Beta App Distribution

You have a link to the Google Play and you can do your best on marketing to promote your app to the users.

Feedback Collection

Users can submit their feedback via Google Play as usual except a possibility to rate your app.

Early Access Promotion

You also can apply to the Google Play Early Access program via this form - Early Access Form if you want your app to be listed in the Early Access section.

Unlike other Android apps, telegram distributes its beta updates through their app itself. It means that if you installed the beta app once, you will start receiving in-app messages as soon as a new beta update will become available.

It can be used as an alternative way to distribute Android apps. You will get an *.APK file which you will need to install manually. Telegram beta is a standalone app and you can install it separately.

Our mission at TestingCatalog.com is testing applications, being them in alpha or beta stages. To make your lives easier, our website has been undergoing a plethora of optimizations regarding the simplification of the process of applying for testing programs and we were certainly able to achieve some remarkable results. There are always a couple of steps that you have to follow, depending on the application, plus some problems and workarounds for them we noted down, so without further ado, let’s see what they are in detail.

To enter a testing program you can choose between one of the following four methods listed below: